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What is Team Shape?
Team Shape is one of 3 primary factors which determine a players individual mentality.
Team Mentality determines the team's collective mentality / strategy.
Player Duty determines an individual's duty, within that collective team strategy.
Team Shape how individual players prioritise the collective team mentality vs their own individual duty. → More Structured team shapes instruct players prioritise their individual duty over the team mentality. → Flexible team shape means players balance team mentality and individual duty equally. → More Fluid team shapes mean players prioritise the team mentality over their individual duty, hence why we talk about "compactness".
How do we apply this in the Tactics Creator?
Select the most logical Team Mentality for your overall strategy.
Apply Team Instructions to tailor defensive, build-up and attacking strategy.
Select a Formation which sets defensive structure and facilitates your overall strategy.
Apply Individual Duties to define your attacking structure.
Choose your Team Shape depending on how players should prioritise their Team Mentality vs Individual Duty.
Select Player Roles and Instructions based on their movement and status as a playmaker (not their name).
Set your Set Pieces.
When you look at it this way, it makes the Tactics Creator pretty simple, logical and easy to relate to real life football.
There. That's it. Simple. Next question. World peace?
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This is a very short article but can be a work in progress, if people don't understand it clearly. I actually wrote a much longer article in the first place but boiled it down and it's actually not as complicated as we often make out.

Hi people, I'm new here. I've got somewhat "obsessed" with the issue of Team Shape. I've read a number of useful posts and articles and I now understand that, in general, more fluid shapes offer more compactness due to relatively less differences in players' mentalities, while the opposite is true for more structured systems. I also understand that even within a more structured system you can still make the team be more compact by using formations in which players are deployed in at least three successive strata (i.e. defense, defensive midfield and midfield), as well as by appropriately assigning roles and duties to the players.
Now, let's imagine, purely hypothetically, that I simply have to use the 4-4-2 flat formation because I don't have (enough) players who can occupy DM or WB positions. My team is playing against a far stronger opponent, so I logically choose the Defensive Team Mentality. My primary goal is not to concede (rather than to score). I want my players to sit back as much as possible and defend as a compact unit. But in a flat 4-4-2 combined with a more structured system, even if I put all my four midfielders on Defend duty, the team still wouldn't be compact enough and there will be the space between the defensive and midfield lines that the opposition could exploit - something I certainly want to avoid. And so I decide to switch to a more fluid shape. Now I have the compactness, but on the other hand, my players are given too much creative freedom, and the problem is that they are neither tactically (mentally) nor technically proficient enough for such a style of play. Consequently, I go to Team Instructions and select the Be More Disciplined instruction (plus, optionally, Stick to Positions) in order to reduce the players' overall tendency to be more "creative" than I want them to be.
Therefore, we now have this situation:
Team Mentality - Defensive
Formation - 4-4-2 flat
Team Shape - (very) Fluid + Be More Disciplined (and, perhaps, Stick to Positions)
My question is: to what extent the Be More Disciplined TI would affect/reduce the players' creative freedom in a more fluid system? Has anyone of you tried to play this way, and if yes, how did it work?
Thanks everybody in advance

I’ve read that the games descriptions of mentality and team shape are poorly written.
For example that Counter is actually a better mentality for control than control.
Is there a thread on here that translates things from the tactical screen, and offers shared observations about instructions, individual instructions, roles etc?
I’m quite hungry to expand my playing styles in different careers, as well as learn how to make tactical changes based on the ME and not using real life logic and staring at misunderstood instruction definitions.
Also ive seen people make comments such as “the recommended attributes for a position are guidelines only, if you employ a trequarista with strength, stamina and pace you have a completely different animal”
Id love to find a thread dedicated to translating and brainstorming player roles also, as I feel there is more to the game than the misleading face value in game descriptions.
I have favourite player roles but would like to understand them all.

Right before a Versus match starts, a screen shows up with starting line-ups and it shows each team's mentality and team shape.
It makes no sense to tell my opponent how my team will play!!! It totally messes up tactical battles